The Camp Fire Girls at School eBook

called for in the machine, much to Hinpoha’s
disgust, for that walk was her chief joy these days.
After a week of the tonic her soul rebelled against
the nauseous dose, and when the first bottle was empty
and Aunt Phoebe sent her to get it refilled, she “refilled”
it herself with a mixture of licorice candy and water,
which produced a black syrup similar in appearance
to the original medicine, but minus the bad taste
and the stigma of “patent medicine,” a
thing which the Winnebagos had promised their Guardian
they would not take. As this was deceiving her
aunt she felt obliged to put a blot on her head ’scutcheon,
in the form of a black record, but she was so inwardly
amused at it that her appetite improved of its own
accord, and Aunt Phoebe remarked in a gratified way
that she had never known the equal of Mullin’s
Modifier as a tonic.

Migwan finished her story, copied it carefully on
foolscap and sent it away to a magazine, confident
that in a very short time she would behold it in print,
and the payment she would receive for it would keep
her in spending money throughout the school year.
So with a light and merry heart she set out for Gladys’s
house on Saturday morning, where the girls were all
to meet for the outing. It was one of those dream-like
days in late autumn, when the earth, still decked in
her brilliant garments, seems to lie spellbound in
the sunshine, as if there were no such thing as the
coming of winter.

The girls, clad in blue skirts and white middies and
heavy sweaters, were whirled down to the dock in the
Evans’s automobile, with the Keewaydin
tied upright at the back. The launch was waiting
for them, at one of the big boat docks, sandwiched
in between two immense lake steamers. Nothing
could have been a greater contrast to their trip up
the Shadow River the summer before than this excursion.
On that other trip they had been the only living beings
on the horizon, and nature was supreme everywhere,
but here they were fairly engulfed by the works of
man. The tiny craft nosed her way among giant
steamers, six-hundred-foot freighters, coal barges,
lighters, fire boats, tugs, scows, and all the other
kinds of vessels that crowd the river-harbor of a great
lake port. Viewed from below, the steel structure
of the viaduct over the river stretched out like the
monstrous skeleton of some prehistoric beast.
Whistles shrieked deafeningly in their ears and trains
pounded jarringly over railroad bridges. A jack-knife
bridge began to descend over their very heads.
Over where the new bridge was being constructed men
stood on slender girders high in the air, catching
red-hot rivets that were being tossed them, while
an automatic riveting hammer filled the air with its
nerve-destroying clamor. Everywhere was bustle
and confusion, and noise, noise, noise.